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Shirley You're Joking
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11/9/2005
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Atlanta is fast becoming known for the following-
Bankrupt airline
Crumbling sewer system
Questionable power grid
Absurd property taxes to help pay for it all.
With that in mind, what would be the very best way our fine city could spend $6,000,000?
If you said "Hire a marketing company to make a new logo for the city and write a hip new song about the ATL", you are at once a complete moron and absolutely correct.
Don't get me wrong- I like living in Atlanta...I just think of this city as the insecure awkward guy who doesn't know that his friends only keep him around for practical jokes. If Chicago, Boston, and New York invited Atlanta to a sleepover, they'd play hide and seek, but while Atlanta was trying to stuff himself into the cabinet under the sink the other cities would shit in his sleeping bag and see how long he'd stay hidden before he figured out that he was the only one playing. Not that that ever happened to me, but for some reason I identify...
Actually that last paragraph is a condensed account of my childhood.
So we re-branded the city. Atlanta went out and started taking creatine and going to the tanning bed, maybe threw in some highlights and bought a snowboard in an attempt to fit in. Awesome, because nothing will make people accept you faster than desperation.
Now we have a fancy one-color logo in coca-cola red, a slogan, and a new song.
The logo is what it is. Seemingly uninspired, but I couldn't do better myself because I tend to distance myself from worthless tasks. If I had to take a cynical stab at it, Atlanta's logo would be more like this-
The invoice is in the mail, Mayor Franklin.
The slogan- optimism, opportunity, openness. The three o's we all grew up not hearing from our parents and Sunday school teachers. These three words are surprisingly relevant to the city, but not in the context they intended. For instance, I was optimistic that they would have the brain power to take the opportunity to spend all of that money on something the citizens needed, but was open to the concept that they might do something stupid with it.
"Congestion, Confusion, Construction" is way more accurate, but I understand that it's not much of a branding vehicle.
Lastly, the song. I'm not going to tiptoe around this one, although I have learned from experience and observation that disagreeing with anything a black person says or does makes you a racist. Oh you think I'm lying? Well, maybe you should go pick up your hood and robe from the drycleaner, mister racist.
The song (available for public mockery November 10th) was written and performed by a music producer. Yes, you read that correctly. Dallas Austin has produced songs for some musical heavy hitters, but having a producer write a song is like having a stripper do your taxes. Even if she does it for free (and to his credit, Mr. Austin donated his time to create the anthem), you're going to have to have it done over.
The end result is a cacophonous r&b/hiphop casserole of something on the order of 912 vocal tracks, each one being a very impassioned singer going "OOoooaahooaoaoaoaaahhOOOOO" with the chant "A...T...L" in the background. One line says "Atlanta, where the music brings you to your knees, and we have lots and lots of trees" or some other lyric that could have been written by Nickleback. It even has a verse that says "Get em up, get em up, get em up, get em up".
If you think about it, every timeless classic anthem ever written has that verse in it. You can hear Ray Charles getting em up right after he sings the bit about the moonlight through the pines.
 Dusty
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posted by Dusty at 7:30 AM |
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7 Comments:
Oh, and don't make fun of the trees, for they will someday be your toiletpaper. And you don't want angry toiletpaper.
-H
Association of Tobacco & Liquor ?
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